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Producers do get a bit trigger-happy at times. It's a short-term injection of higher viewing figures

John Altman

"Nick had a line about Fatboy saying: 'At least that P**i has gone,' and then Dot told him off," Altman claimed.

"Nick Cotton is a racist psychopath. They stopped filming and changed it to: 'At least that illegal immigrant has gone'. It's not what Nick Cotton would say."

Altman - who admitted since leaving that he asked the writers to spare his character - also expressed that he thinks the show has overdone it of late with regards to the number of weekly episodes being aired and the choice to kill off major characters.

"Producers do get a bit trigger-happy at times. It's a short-term injection of higher viewing figures but then they settle back to what they were before. I think the quality was better when there were fewer episodes," he said.

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"I'm not being nostalgic or pining for the good old days but in the earlier episodes, the storylines were deeper and you got to know the characters better. When you have more characters, you can't spend as much time with each of them.”

He compared the workload of working on the soap to constantly “being on a treadmill” and “doing exams every week”.